Friday, June 10, 2011

Roosevelt’s Record on Unemployment: The Myth and Reality

We have all seen the unemployment graphs showing the level of joblessness in the 1930s under Roosevelt. Such graphs typically show that unemployment fell form 25% in 1933 to 15% in 1937. But in fact these official statistics do not include the employment provided by emergency and relief work provided by the US federal government. And the reason for this was nothing but an ideological bias on the part of Lebergott who compiled these figures.

When employment provided by relief work is included in the employment figures, unemployment under Roosevelt came down from 25% to just under 10% by 1937. This is a much better record on unemployment than the official statistics reveal. More information can be found on this issue here:

The unemployment rate soared again when Roosevelt cut government spending in 1937, but the adjusted figures show it rising from under 10% to about 12.5% in 1938, and not to around 19% in the old figures.

Mises dot org? LMFAO. Mises was chief economist for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and was an economic adviser of Engelbert Dollfuss, the austrofascist. Funny that even today, the American right prefer the fascists over FDR.